


i hope the worst isn't over (and i hope you blink before i do)

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5+1 Things, Dancing, Love (and irritation), M/M, There's blood (of one of the people Ludo inhumes), and Rhetoric (really dumb wordplay)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27233140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: Five times Lord Downey danced with Havelock Vetinari and one time he doesn't
Relationships: Lord Downey/Havelock Vetinari
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	i hope the worst isn't over (and i hope you blink before i do)

**1 - Crueltide**

The prospect of dancing was daunting enough. Having the first lesson in front of what felt like half the guild school was putting damper on Downey’s entire day. The past two years the latest plague outbreak had shut down the annual ball, which had meant that dance classes had been avoidable until now.

Still, it wasn’t like you had to be good at dancing to maintain your social standing, you just had to show willing. But he had, indisputably, created a situation in which he would be watched. He hadn’t meant to become the leader of a clique, but in pushing and shoving his way to where he perceived the top of the pile to be, it had assembled around him composed of scags trying to avoid becoming a target and a few who actually tolerated him.

Downey decided to take a walk outside in the ten minutes between classes because the cold air would make him feel better. The little weirdo he had been calling Dog-Botherer had evidently had a similar train of— No, he realized, seeing the expression of the boy sitting on the front steps, Vetinari was looking forward to dancing and had gone outside in the softly drifting snow to squeeze even more joy out of the morning. His eyes followed the path of snowflakes with an expression of pure wonder.

It was too fluffy to make a snowball, so Downey settled for scooping a handful of snow off the railing and slipping it down the back of Vetinari’s coat.

Vetinari only sighed and very slowly stood up. Composing himself, he turned his head to see who had done it with a sad, sad smile and Downey wished he had not decided to go outside.

The polished wood floor of the ballroom seemed to roll into the distance further than seemed possible from the external dimensions of the room.

M de Balourd was demonstrating the steps of a waltz with an older student. Downey tried to count the beats of the music. Then Balourd was pairing people up.

“Mr Downey, you can start off leading with Mr Vetinari.”

Vetinari was all poise as he stood up, although Downey thought he saw him dig his nails into his palms and take a deep breath.

He extended his left hand and Vetinari bowed before taking it as though he were beginning a duel.

“Good morning,” Havelock said, and the arch of his eyebrow said ‘it is whether you want it or not.’

Vetinari was following the music and Downey thought he was beginning to find the rhythm but then he realized he was being physically guided by the thin hand on his shoulder. There was no impatience or judgment in Vetinari’s corrections, but then, there wouldn’t be. Havelock might resent being in this situation but he was going to be a perfect gentleman about it.

“Is it true that you were kicked out of your house dorm room?” Downey was fighting the possibility that he might be beginning to feel exhilarated, that he might be starting to understand why people enjoyed moving like this _because_ of how good of a partner Dog-Botherer was. He hoped his hands were not sweating as much as he felt like they were. 

“You should really focus on your feet— No, don’t look down.”

“Were you, though?”

“I’m not sure what I did wrong.”

“That must be pretty upsetting, huh?” Downey said, attempting compassion. If Havelock had actually done something awful to be voted out of the dorm, he would have heard about it. He suspected Scorpion House was ashamed of taking issue with “won’t shut up about social infrastructure” and “interrupts conversations he’s not part of to correct people.”

“Not really. They put me in 304, you know, the big room on the turnwise corner of the building?”

“Damn you. Everything always goes your way.”

Havelock shot him an odd look.

“You know what I think? I think you need me because I give you stupid problems. Who knows where you’d be you didn’t have to deal with my total idiocy everyday.”

Havelock guided Liam’s arm into the air so he could turn under it. “Do you know long bone bruises from being tripped going up stone steps take to heal? Or that having water on my clothes makes me feel like I want to crawl out of my skin? Or— Oh, taking the initiative, very good.” Downey had switched hands and let go leaving Vetinari to free spin. 

“I wish I could move like that.”

“You can. I am currently doing nothing beyond your range of motion. If I were to do this, on the other hand—“ Havelock executed something that was nominally the steps of a gavotte but passed through a développé that briefly brought his foot above chest height.

“You’re so vain.”

“You are not a total idiot.”

“I… thank you…” Downey said, stunned.

“You are responsible for your actions and the effect they have. You have knowingly hurt people and the only reason—“ Havelock stepped close again and Downey returned his hand to his back before Balourd could shout at him for standing still “The only reason I feel remotely safe right now is that we are in the center of a crowded room.”

Downey felt chilled, both by the words spoken primly and quietly and the ice-cold hand that grasped his.

**2 - Mov și Albastru**

They were passing through Mouldavia when Ludo, Robertson and Downey finally succeeded in convincing Havelock Vetinari to come to a club with them. It had taken five countries and twelve cities to reach this point. Now they were here they were employing the plentitude of their rhetorical skill.

“Come on, Vetinari, let your hair down,” Robertson pleaded. The young man he was arguing with was standing totally still as though rooted to the floor.

“My hair is down.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Ludo pointed out helpfully.

“It is a four-hundred-year old idiom.”

There was colored glass over the lights, turning them purple and blue. The music throbbed.

Downey was jumping up and down and sort of waving his arms, looking somewhat embarrassed. “You can just move, it doesn’t matter.”

Havelock started slowly, bending his knees and moving his shoulders and hips in time, but the next song was one he recognized and suddenly his footwork was as fast and complex as the music.

“Or you could do that.”

Guided by the music, Vetinari fluidly reached out and touched Downey’s chest, articulating each joint of his wrist and hand, then stepped away. Not sure he could keep up, but since this why he had asked Havelock to come here, Downey tried to match his energy.

Ludo and Robertson were staring at them. There was something oddly confrontational about the way they were circling each other, not necessarily competitive, but like they both had something to prove. 

**3 – Squaring the Square**

So things had gotten complicated at the Patricio of Quirm’s promenade and by ‘gotten complicated’ I mean Ludo had hit an artery and Vetinari had been standing too close.

“It’s a shame really,” Havelock picked at some of the blood that had dried on his sleeve, “I’d like to go back to the dance.”

“You were really more bothered by me pouring water on you than being covered in blood?” Downey wondered.

“My sensory experiences are not dictated by rational thought. I don’t have any problem with blood, it is—“

“Thicker than water?” Downey suggested.

Havelock’s shoulders shook with silent laughter.

Downey looked at the distant illuminated squares of the windows of the palace “We can almost hear the music from out here.”

“I don’t need to hear the music. Sometimes I’d rather not hear the music.” Vetinari bowed and reached out his hand, palm up.

They started dancing, Downey mirroring Vetinari’s steps, trying to anticipate when he was going to add in clapping and stomping before he did so.

“You’re turning a quadrille into a quadriglia.”

“Am I squaring the square, Downey? Am I tiling an integral quadrilateral with integral quadrilaterals?” Vetinari said, his voice following the rhythm of the dance.

“You think you’re so funny.”

“I am so funny.”

“You’re covered in blood.”

Vetinari increased the speed of the dance to double time compared to the faint music from the palace, too fast to talk. After indicating for him to turn, he looped Downey’s arm around his body and dropped him into a dip nearly to the ground.

Liam had beautiful eyes, black-brown like very dark dravite tourmaline crystals. They looked up from a face flushed with exertion, overwhelmed.

“How did you learn to do this?”

Vetinari lifted him back onto his feet. “I have to run ahead every moment of my life. I have to learn as I go to survive.”

“You really think you’re special, don’t you?” Downey’s bitterness was a turn on a dime, but not unexpected.

**4 - MIDD**

“Where’s your date?”

“A dragon burned her feet,” Vetinari said.

Lady Sybil Ramkin was seated a table near the edge of the dance floor. She waved at the Assassins. “Occupational hazard, I’m afraid.”

“Shouldn’t you stay with her?” Downey was unclear on the rules surrounding publicly dating someone.

“It would not be fair to detain him,” Sybil said graciously.

“Detain,” Havelock repeated. “What a word. Smells like iodine.”

“The word detain smells like iodine,” Downey said in a monotone.

“Even more the way you lot say it. I don’t really do the dipthong the same way.”

“May I have this dance, Dog-Botherer?” Downey asked, cutting Vetinari off before he could start repeating the word ‘detain’ in different accents.

To his surprise, once they began dancing, Vetinari was not backleading. Downey was almost tempted to ask him if he was feeling alright.

“Have you two been practicing?”

“Liam, I am a member of the Institute of Dance and Deportment. I do actually know to follow.”

“Have I really improved that much?”

Havelock shrugged. “Sometimes I need to not be in be in control.” Downey led him through an outside spin, having him turn on tiptoe. “To give myself over to someone else’s decisions.”

“Now I worry I’m not making entertaining enough choices.”

“To entertain me or to entertain yourself?” Havelock asked.

Downey lowered him into an oversway. “That’s a good question.”

“Theoretically following is a matter of trust. You are responsible for my experience. But it is also a skill. Waiting to see what will happen. The wise man steers, but his hand is not superglued to the rudder.”

Downey pulled him closer to turn quickly so the room appeared to whirl around them.

Eventually they wandered back over to Sybil.

“How many of the dragons do you keep in the house?” Vetinari asked.

“Only the ones who are really sick or scared.” Sybil said.

“Don’t sick dragons have a tendency to explode?” Downey wondered.

“Just because something is dangerous doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be loved,” Lady Ramkin said passionately.

**5 – If This Be Error**

“You’re a peer of the realm now.”

“You haven’t got a realm, you’ve got a wretched hive of scum and villainy."

“A peer of the hive of scum and villainy. How are you liking it?”

Downey considered this. Not much had changed since he had been granted the title. “People don’t look at me so strangely when I call you by your first name, which is… Quite weird actually, come to think of it.”

“I didn’t think ‘Cruces tries to murder me with experimental weaponry’ was how you were going to become the head of the Guild.”

“You didn’t think I was going to ever be in charge of anything.”

“That’s not true. You started that… horticultural club thing.”

“It is so true.” He looked at the Patrician. Lord Vetinari had been seated throughout the conferring of his title days ago and, though he was standing now, he was leaning against the windowsill. “How’s your leg?”

“Eh. I can sort of walk.”

“I don’t know if this will work, or if you want to try it, it’s probably a terrible idea, but I was thinking if you put most of your weight on me, like an arm around my shoulders, you might be able to dance.”

“That sounds like something someone would suggest before sticking a knife in my back.”

“Do you want to try it?”

“Desperately.” 

Havelock put his arms around the shoulders of the Master of the Assassins Guild.

Downey could nearly lift him off the ground accidentally, which was alarming, and he could feel the sharp edge of his ribcage move with his breath. “I don’t think I’ve ever held you like this before.”

Vetinari hummed at this observation and cautiously took a step backward with his right foot. That seemed okay. Downey echoed his movements in reverse, stepping forward. It was a halting progress but indisputably a dance.

“D’you hate me?” the Patrician asked, very carefully contracting the interrogative verb to avoid the question of tense.

Lord Downey sighed. “I think there’s something wrong with me. It’s like I keep trying to find fault, find something unforgivable but there’s… I just keep looking, keep expecting to find a reason to give up on you, to turn against you… because if I stop…” Vetinari felt the shuddering breath against his chest.

“I’m afraid I started off pitying you... “ Vetinari paused to consider this, “No, I tell a lie. That was the little story I was told to tell myself. I was attracted to you because you were not afraid of me. From almost the beginning. Gods know _I_ was afraid of me.”

“I think I’m kind of confused by… they say love is not love which alters when it alteration finds but I can think of any number of things you could do that would be inexpiable, the notion of separating a person from their behavior—“

“Downey.”

“Yes?”

“Half of that poem is about aging.”

“Oh.”

“I—“ Vetinari sucked in air through his teeth as the damaged thigh muscles protested having to stand during an overly ambitious step “non è buono.”

Downey actually did lift him so his feet cleared the ground. “I do want you to be okay. I don’t know how clear I have been about that.”

**6 - Memory**

The presence of Rosemary Palm and Havelock Vetinari at the annual Assassins Guild ball was inexplicable until Downey realized it was thirty years to the day of the first ball that hadn’t happened since the plague years. Rosemary had helped the Assassins that Snapcase was targeting come up with an exit plan on the fly.

He remembered the night before they had left in separate directions. Havelock had found an old violin that was missing an E string and was endeavoring to make it shriek melodramatically in 4th position. Rosie had refused to give Downey more than one glass of the objectively disgusting ice wine he had asked for but she had found some crushed packets of very nice biscuits for the emergency meeting. He seemed to recall crying but he wasn’t sure who was crying so it was probably just him.

They had been terrified, all three of them, and Downey hadn’t really understood what had happened but he had a vague sense that for the other two this had been an expected possible outcome. Instant suspicion on the part of the new Patrician of the forces that had had brought him to power. Was it ever thus?

He glanced over at the current Patrician, sitting on a cushion on one of the purple-grey stained wooden chairs, ankles crossed. The forces that had brought Lord Vetinari to power had been himself so additional suspicion would be redundant, but it had happened, hadn’t it? There had been a period in which he had not trusted his own judgment. But then came the advent of the guild system.

Downey looked back at Mrs Palm, with whom he was dancing. She was a less garrulous partner than Vetinari, but you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who wasn’t. She objected to being called a hero for subtler reasons than the behavior of those who generally bore that title. She had said many times that she organized and acted out of the obligations all people bore to each other, a solidarity beyond her profession, and to call that heroic was both irritating when it seemed the only option, and an excuse for inaction. Downey still thought it, though, because those were the words his admiration had couched itself in when he was still learning to ask for tomorrow to be different from today.

In those frantic days of late spring of the Year of the Dancing Dog, Rosie and Havelock had driven home the point that people weren’t in boxes of intentions and outcomes circumscribing what they could do. There were probably people for whom ‘not categorizing individuals as good or bad’ was not requisite for not thinking of themself as a bad person, but Downey was not one of them.

Mrs Palm had a somewhat better sense of timing than Downey had and she seemed equally amused and impatient about having to wait for him.

“Your Lordship,” Vetinari was good at pitching his voice to carry through other sounds without speaking loudly.

Downey didn’t look over. “Don’t call me that.”

“You did actually ask for the title, albeit in a convoluted asking-without-asking way,” Rosemary pointed out.

“Dr Downey.”

“Better.”

“I was wondering if you could get me another drink.”

Downey looked at the ruler of the city who was resting his chin on laced fingers. “I think you’re the only person in this room who would trust me to do that.” 


End file.
